Effects and mechanisms of analytics-assisted reflective assessment in fostering undergraduates' collective epistemic agency in computer-supported collaborative inquiry

Abstract

Background: Undergraduates' collective epistemic agency is critical for their productive collaborative inquiry and knowledge building (KB). However, fostering undergraduates' collective epistemic agency is challenging. Studies have demonstrated the potential of computer-supported collaborative inquiry approaches, such as KB—the focus of this study, and reflective assessment to foster collective epistemic agency. Objectives: This study used a quasi-experimental design to examine the impact of reflective assessment on undergraduates' collective epistemic agency and the mechanisms of this impact. Methods: An experimental class, comprising 40 undergraduates, engaged in KB inquiry enhanced by analytics-assisted reflective assessment, while a comparison class, comprising 41 undergraduates, engaged in portfolio-supported reflective assessment in KB inquiry. Classroom observations, audio recordings of group discussions and reflections, and student artefacts were collected in both conditions. Results and Conclusions: The experimental class demonstrated significantly higher levels of collective epistemic agency than the comparison class, as indicated by their collective knowledge advancement and epistemic and metacognitive actions. Qualitative thematic analysis revealed that reflective assessment enhanced the undergraduates' collective epistemic agency through their collective monitoring and regulation of inquiry and ideas, negotiation and synthesis of the community's ideas, conceptualization of collective theories and identification of collective inquiry trajectories with an internal reflective structure. Major Takeaways: Higher-level metacognitive actions are critical for productive collaborative inquiry and higher-level epistemic agency that does not often occur naturally and should be promoted by appropriate scaffolding strategies. Students need data from learning analytics and accompanying prompt sheets to help them develop the internal metacognitive structure for agency and learning.